The Legacy of Lucille: The Surprising Story Behind B.B. King's Guitar - Rolling Stone The Legacy of Lucille: The Surprising Story Behind B.B. King's Guitar The Legacy of Lucille: The Surprising Story Behind B.B. King's Guitar After it was rescued from a fire, the guitar became an icon B.B. King and his guitar, Lucille, were virtually inseparable for more than a half-century. Credit: Paul Natkin/Getty Eric Clapton had "Blackie" and "Brownie"; Willie Nelson has "Trigger" ; Keith Richards, "Micawber." But before all of them, B.B. King had "Lucille." More News B.B. King, Blues Legend, Dead at 89 Brilliant bluesman who inspired a generation of guitarists and singers dies after decades-long battle with diabetes For more than a half-century, the bluesman and Lucille have been virtually inseparable — few, if any, relationships between man and guitar have persevered for as long or proven more fruitful.

Lucille is the stinging single-note lines that punctuate "The Thrill Is Gone" and "Sweet Little Angel"; the embodiment of the whole of American blues music on U2's "When Love Comes to Town"; and, more generally speaking, the sound that has stirred and inspired guitarists for generations. Lucille also serves as B.B. King's voice, as much as the bluesman's actual voice. "The minute I stop singing orally," he once said , "I start to sing by playing Lucille." One thing that Lucille is not — unlike Blackie, Trigger or Micawber — is a one-of-a-kind instrument. Through the years, there have been many Lucilles. Today, Lucille is widely recognized as a black-with-gold-hardware Gibson ES-355–style guitar. But she came into being as a much different instrument, one born — in a origin story befitting a blues icon — in a burst of fighting and fire. Related PHOTOS: 10 Legendary Acts That Wouldn't Exist Without B.B.

King From Jimi Hendrix to Stevie Ray Vaughan, King's impact is large and undeniable Lucille's beginnings date to 1949, when King, then in his early 20s, was performing at a nightclub in Twist, Arkansas, in the dead of winter. To heat the cold room, King recalled in a video interview , "they would take something that looked like a big garbage pail, half fill it with kerosene, light that fuel [and] set it in the middle of the dance floor." All well and good, but on this night, a fight broke out between two men, and the pail was knocked over. "It spilled on the floor, it looked like a river fire," the guitarist said. "And everyone started to run for the front door, including B.B. King." The blueseman managed to make it to safety outside — only to realize he had left his guitar behind. He raced back inside to retrieve it even as the wooden building, he said, "started to fall in around me." The next day, he learned that two men had died in the blaze and that the fight that had set off the tragic chain of events had been over a woman who worked at the club.

Her name was Lucille. Werner B.B., who claimed he "almost lost [his] life" rushing back into the nightclub, christened his guitar after her, he said, "to remind me never to do a thing like that again." The original Lucille — the guitar King rescued that night in the fire — was an inexpensive, small-bodied Gibson L-30 archtop. The singer would go on to play a range of guitars over the ensuing years, attaching the Lucille name to each one. He was particularly drawn to Gibsons of the semi-hollow "ES" (Electric Spanish) variety, such as the ES-335 model that can be heard on his legendary 1965 disc, Live at the Regal. He eventually arrived at the ES-355, a top-of-the-line model boasting stately looks (gold-plated hardware, multi-layered binding, big mother-of-pearl fretboard markers) and a sharp but sweet tone bolstered by dual humbucking pickups and stereo and mono outputs. The ES-355 remained B.B.'s instrument of choice until the early Eighties, when he collaborated with Gibson to create his own signature model.

Known as the Gibson "Lucille," the guitar was essentially a 355 outfitted with several modifications, some of them aesthetic (the personalized "Lucille" headstock), and others more functional — King, who reportedly would occasionally stuff rags into the f-holes of his guitars to reduce feedback, requested that on his signature model the f-holes simply be removed entirely. Related PHOTOS: B.B. King's 5 Greatest Live Performances The recordings that prove the blues legend was one of the greatest live performers in history Over the years, the Gibson Lucille has been issued in a variety of iterations, including a limited-edition "King of the Blues" version and an ostentatious "Super Lucille." In 2005, Gibson produced an 80th Birthday model Lucille for the bluesman, which he summarily adopted as his main stage instrument — until, in the summer of 2009, it was stolen. But a few months later, a guitar trader and appraiser named Eric Dahl came across this very Lucille in a Las Vegas pawn shop. "The whole thing was covered in sweat. The strings were nasty," Dahl told Gibson.com .

"Then I flipped it over and looked at the headstock and it said, 'Prototype 1' in a white stamp.... I assumed it meant this was one of the original 80th Birthday model Lucilles that B.B. King had approved." Unaware of what he was holding in his hands, but curious about its unusual headstock stamp, Dahl contacted Gibson about the guitar. Following several months of dead-end inquiries, he was notified that the instrument was not merely a Lucille approved by B.B. King but, rather, King's actual Lucille. Upon hearing his guitar had been recovered, King met with Dahl and traded him a new Lucille for the prized 80th Birthday model. Following the exchange, Dahl recalled that King "told me he hoped I'd enjoy playing mine as much as he enjoys playing his." Indeed, it would seem that B.B. King has continued to enjoy playing his Lucille, right up to and through his most recent show, on October 3rd, 2014.

That night, like thousands of nights before it, could likely have been summed up by the opening lines of King's song "Lucille," the paean to his trusty companion that King recorded for his 1968 album of the same name: The sound that you're listenin' to Is from my guitar that's named Lucille It's a sound blues fans have been listening to now for more than 50 years, and it's one the world won't soon forget. Don’t Miss a Story Sign up for our newsletter to receive breaking news directly in your inbox. We may use your e-mail address to send you the newsletter and offers that may interest you, on behalf of Rolling Stone and its partners. For more information please read our Privacy Policy How we use your email address Trending Ranked on a scale from 1 to 10, the trending score reflects the number of users reading a story in real time. What is this? 10 Things You Gotta Do To Play Like B.B. King | TAB | GuitarPlayer BY Jesse Gress July 1, 2007 FROM HIS HUMBLE BEGINNINGS as a plantation worker to his rise to world-class status as King of the Blues, B.B.

King not only personifies every guitarist’s version of the great American dream, he stands as a true model among men. His philosophy of life and dedication to his art form the bedrock of a remarkable 60-year career dedicated to self-improvement and universal brotherhood. A consummate musician and entertainer, King has touched and inspired people of every age, race, and creed. In the ’60s, his playing was adopted as the gospel by a younger generation of guitar phenoms that included Michael Bloomfield, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimi Hendrix, and Johnny Winter. Looking back on how each successive stratum of guitarists has built on the ideas of the previous, it’s vividly apparent that B.B. King is single-handedly responsible for much of today’s blues and rock guitar vocabulary. King has maintained relentless touring and recording schedules since 1950, often playing as many as 300 dates per year.

He’s a veteran of an estimated 12,000 gigs and too many sessions to count, though Live at the Regal (1965), Blues is King (1967), Live & Well, and Completely Well (both 1969) are particularly timeless. To stay fresh, King has always kept up with the times by recording with a wide variety of artists, from the Jazz Crusaders and Ray Charles to U2 and Sheryl Crow. He has performed for presidents and was even a featured GP columnist from February through November ’83. Even at 82, King shows few signs of slowing down. How does one begin to emulate such a vast wealth of experience? First, you’ve gotta ... 1. DEVELOP BIG EARS Once a Memphis disc jockey whose handle was “The Beale Street Blues Boy” (yep, that’s where “B.B.” came from) and always an avid listener, King drew inspiration from a deep well of influences. By 1980, his blues and jazz record collection numbered over 30,000 discs! Today, King’s vast library of music has been digitized and travels wherever he does.

“My style is a mixture of people that I’ve idolized,” King told GP in 1970. His seminal list of favorites included Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lonnie Johnson, T-Bone Walker, Charlie Christian, Django Reinhardt, and his cousin and former mentor Bukka White, and you’ll find many of these players’ characteristic musical traits embedded in King’s playing. And despite being self-taught, King firmly advocates musical education. “Get yourself a teacher, take music lessons, and learn everything you can about your instrument,” he says. “Learn to read music. Later on you’ll be qualified to play whatever you want.” 2. FIND YOUR SOUL MATE Perhaps you’ve heard the tale of how King came to name his guitar Lucille. (He rescued it from a fire started at an Arkansas juke joint when two men began fighting over a woman named Lucille.) But did you know that King’s original Lucille was a little black Gibson acoustic fitted with a DeArmond pickup? Or that King went through nearly every guitar in the book before discovering Gibson’s ES-335 in 1958 and settling on his beloved ES-355 in 1959?

“Fenders, Gretsches, Silvertones—you name them, I’ve probably had one,” says King. “When I found that Gibson with the long neck, that did it. That’s like finding your wife forever.” As of 1992, King was playing his 15th Gibson “Lucille”—which over the years has evolved into the signature semi-hollow sans-f-holes model that he still plays today. King generally disregards the guitar’s Varitone circuitry, opting to adjust the guitar’s volume and tone controls on the fly. “I set my guitar according to how it sounds. I never look down to see what I’m doing,” he says. In concert, King prefers to coax surprisingly overdriven tones (the man hits the strings hard) from a Fender Twin Reverb or Lab Series 2x12 combo, and, except for setting the bass control at about 6, he runs his amp “wide open, all the time. I do that so that when I need extra power, I can get it from the guitar.” It’s no wonder that for the last 30 years, King’s sound has approximated Clapton’s coveted “woman tone” more so than E.C.

himself. 3. FLOAT LIKE A BUTTERFLY In addition to his revolutionary string bends, King developed his “butterfly” vibrato (or “trill,” in King’s words)—so named for the way his fretting hand opens up and appears to flutter over the strings—after hearing slide guitarists use the technique to sustain notes. “I think that the best thing I’ve done is learning to trill in such a way that I create a sound similar to that produced by a person using a bottleneck,” says King. “Trying to get that effect is what started me working on my vibrato, which is kind of like a steady pulse, pushing the string up and letting it go without losing control of it. I try my best to make my left hand trill evenly without any effort. Of course, a great deal of practice is necessary before the hand attains the dexterity required to move smoothly enough to get that vibrato. I want to make it just like my heartbeat, something I don’t have to think about at all.” Amen! 4. INSPIRE CHILDREN B.B.

King’s heart of gold is legendary, and a perfect example came at a concert in the mid-’80s when he pulled a gifted young student of mine named Adam Hokenson on stage and presented the nine-year-old with his pick. But it didn’t stop there. Four years later, Hokenson was a blooming blues prodigy, when I noticed him sidestage at another King concert. He had the plectrum with him and wanted to thank B.B. for it, so we headed backstage and found the King of the Blues sitting alone, eating half of a sandwich. Adam froze mid-step, his jaw practically dragging on the floor. (He’s starstruck, I thought.) Then Adam blurted, “You’re eating my favorite food—tuna on white!” Hearing these words, King reached out and offered his protégé the other half of the sandwich, and the two guitarists proceeded to munch out together, each sporting as big a grin as you’ve ever seen. Small gesture, huge lesson in generosity. 5. USE YOUR OTHER INSTRUMENT While this is a lesson about playing, the biggest mistake you can make when trying to emulate B.B.

King is to ignore the other half of his music—his singing. In its purest form, blues is about call and response between voice and guitar, and no electric blues player in history exemplifies this synergy better than Mr. King. His lyrical guitar leads pick up seamlessly where his vocals leave off, and it’s no stretch to say that King’s voice and guitar combine to make one bigger instrument. While most of us would be hard-pressed to sing blues with as much soul and conviction as the Beale Street Blues Boy, we can certainly have fun trying. 6. INTRODUCE YOURSELF Examples 1a through 1f depict six classic intro licks that have become synonymous with the name “B.B. King.” Notice that we’re playing over a slow, 12/8 blues groove in Bb. Unlike many blues-rockers, King is partial to “horn” keys, such as F, Bb, Ab, Db, etc., and each three-note pickup begins on beat four, just before the downbeat of bar 1 in a standard 12-bar blues progression. Ex.

1a’s opening 5-6-root motif approaches a whole-step grace-note slide into a partial Bb chord shape followed by a drop back to the 5. Ex. 1b alters the rhythm of the previous pickup, then approaches the same partial Bb chord via a half-step slide, concluding with a tonic Bb rounded off to beat two. The same pickup leads into a first-inversion Bb triad decorated with a half-step grace slide in Ex. 1c, while Ex. 1d reveals an alternative fingering for Ex. 1a. In Ex. 1e, we raise the pickup notes one octave and replace our chordal downbeat with a high-D bend and pair of tonic Bb’s, the latter embellished with plenty of King’s signature “butterfly” vibrato. Finally, Ex. 1f adds another eighth-note and alters the tones to produce a swinging b3-n3-5-6 pickup into a single Bb. Silky moves! 7.

PLAY IT YOUR WAY In addition to putting his own stamp on many familiar T-Bone Walker-style licks, King has developed a unique vocabulary of runs derived from the upper half of the less commonly used hybrid major/minor pentatonic scale pattern located two-and-a-half steps above the standard minor pentatonic blues box. Watch him play and you’ll be surprised by how many “blues box” licks King squeezes out of the compact pattern illustrated in the horn-friendly key of Ab in Ex. 2a. Any essential tones not included, such as the b7, can be achieved by bending the existing ones. You can bend the 5 a whole-step to a sweet, upper octave 6, or one-and-a-half steps for a wailing, over-bent b7, and produce microtonal to spot-on 3’s by bending the 2 a whole-step, or the b3 a half-step. King also uses his 1st finger to bend the 4 a half-step to the b5, or a whole-step to the n5. In Ex.

2b, a six-bar intro excerpt culled from a 2007 performance of the blues standard “Key to the Highway,” every note is derived exclusively from this pattern. 8. TAKE A SAD SONG AND MAKE IT BETTER You can always cram more notes into a slow song than a fast one, but take it from B.B.—quality beats quantity every time. Let’s examine a pair of elegant phrases similar to what King plays on “Sweet Little Angel,” a slow blues in Db. The familiar lazy intro lick and subsequent hurried rhythmic phrase in Ex. 3a are derived from the more common ninth-position blues box, and navigate the I-IV-I change found in bars 1-3 of the 12-bar quick-change progression. Notice how the run ends with another intro lick. Ex. 3b covers the turnaround in bars 11-12 with characteristic lines in both the fourteenth and ninth positions. The closing Db6 punctuation played over the ensemble’s V chord (Ab7) is another King trademark. 9.

ADOPT A THEME SONG King has recorded his longtime theme song, “Every Day I Have the Blues” at a variety of tempos, but none more blistering than the swinging jump-blues version found on Live at the Regal. King hits the stage accompanied by a jumping horn chart, then answers the horn section’s questions with short, melodic bursts that fill the spaces in the arrangement. You’ll find both the horn chart (written in the concert key of Bb) and King’s solo illustrated in Ex. 4. Record or have someone play the horn figure to see exactly how these phrases complement each other. (EXAMPLE NOT SHOWN DUE TO COPYRIGHT) 10. BECOME A STORYTELLER If there’s one classic B.B. King solo you’ve gotta know, it’s ... well, any of them. Each one tells a story, so you simply can’t go wrong. We’ve already transcribed King’s biggest hit, “The Thrill is Gone,” in the February ’99 GP, so let’s continue with “Every Day I Have the Blues.” Ex. 5 presents the second solo chorus from the Regal version of this jumpin’ 12-bar blues.

King commences by rolling his tone control from full bass to full treble mid-bend—a move not lost on a young Eric Clapton, who later mimicked the technique at the end of his “I Feel Free” solo on Fresh Cream (albeit by switching pickups). Additional highlights include King’s sweet staccato and legato bends, generous use of space, a Charlie Christian-influenced Cm7 arpeggio in bar 9, and all-around swingin’ vibe. Enjoy, absorb, and pass it on! I Love Lucille: The Gibson Guitars of B.B. King I Love Lucille: The Gibson Guitars of B.B. King Michael Leonard | 06.03.2014 Everyone knows B.B. King calls his Gibson guitars “Lucille.” The fact is, B.B. has had numerous Lucilles since he fell in love with his first one way back in 1949. And he’s played many other Gibsons that haven’t been blessed with “her” name. Here are the stories… Gibson L-30 – the first Lucille B.B.’s first “Lucille” was a Gibson L-30.

He rescued it from a nightclub fire in Twist, Arkansas, and named it after a woman in the club. King told Jazzweekly.com, “One night, two guys started to fighting and one knocked down one of them containers [kerosene barrels, for heating the club] and it was already burning with kerosene and so when it spilled onto the floor, it looked like a river of fire and everybody started to run for the front door – including B.B. King. “But when I got on the outside, I realized then that I had left my guitar on the inside. So I went back for it. The building was a wooden building and burning rapidly. It started to collapse around me and I almost lost my life trying to save my guitar. So the next morning, we found out that these two guys that were fighting were fighting about a lady that worked in the little dance hall. We learned that her name was Lucille. So I named the guitar Lucille to remind me to never do a thing like that again.” And so the Lucille legend was born. King’s first Lucille was a Gibson L-30, a budget model. The L-30 was small-bodied, non-cutaway and with a flat back.

The L-30 featured a simple trapeze tailpiece and pickguard, an adjustable bridge, single-binding (front and back) and dot fingerboard markers. Early examples were finished in black, but later L-30s had dark mahogany sides, back and neck, with a dark sunburst top. The model was discontinued in 1943. Gibson ES-5 As King’s career flourished, he got a fancier guitar. Launched in 1949, the ES-5 was then one of Gibson’s flashiest and sonically most versatile models – it had three P-90 pickups. King’s was the early version, without the complex switching of the 1955-60 updates. The ES-5 came in blonde and sunburst, but B.B.’s was a blonde, with a trio of volume pots and a black pickguard. The ES-5 was discontinued in 1960. Gibson ES-125 In 1951, King had his major hit with a cover of Lowell Fulson’s “Three O’Clock Blues.” By this time B.B. was playing a Gibson ES-125.

With a single P-90 pickup and no cutaway it featured a bound top and back, tortoiseshell pickguard, single-bound top and back and dot neck inlays. “Three O’Clock Blues” was a slow-burning 12-bar that set the template for B.B.’s inimitable style. No video in 1951, of course, so here King is playing the hit song on a later “Lucille”… Gibson Byrdland Electric blues pioneer T-Bone Walker was a big influence on B.B. T-Bone favored Gibson’s ES-250, a mid-range hollowbody with two P-90s. In 1955, Gibson released the similar ES-350T and Byrdland, with slimmer bodies, better specs and a shorter scale length. The Byrdland was endorsed by jazz players Billy Byrd and Hank Garland – hence the name – and B.B. liked it. Its ebony fingerboard with block pearl inlays were smart, and its shorter scale made it perfect for complex jazz chording. Although B.B.

toted a Byrdland for a while in the late ’50s/early ’60s, its most famous user remains “Motor City Madman” Ted Nugent. Who’da thunk B.B. and “The Nuge” had anything in common? Gibson ES-175 King has also used an ES-175. The guitar was a favorite of jazz legends Joe Pass and Herb Ellis, and King used his for his jazzier excursions. King is pictured with one on the 1959 album BB King Wails. The ES-175, unlike the top-line L-5 and Super 400, had a laminated maple (not solid carved spruce) top. This kept prices down and helped combat feedback. Gibson ES-355 The Gibson ES-355 is the “Lucille” everyone now associates with B.B. King. He’d played many budget-to-flagship Gibsons for many years, but the flash ES-355 was B.B.’s ultimate. A variation of the ES-335, the ES-355 had looks, volume, sweetness and stinging tone.

It also boasted the 6-way Varitone selector, which offers a spread of sounds over and above the Gibson ES-335 norm. You can hear the “honk” of the Varitone’s capabilities on King’s 1969 classic “The Thrill is Gone.” King has played ES-335s and ES-345s too, but the ES-355 was the one fit for a King… and the guitar became the queen of Lucilles. Here’s B.B. at his funkiest best in the 1960s, on a tobacco ES-355. Gibson Lucille It was 1980 when Gibson and King first collaborated to create his own, exclusive Lucille model. As well as personalized pearl inlays, B.B. requested that Gibson remove the f-holes, to reduce feedback. In earlier years, King would often stuff his regular ES-355’s f-holes with cloth to inhibit feedback, so this was a much-needed mod for the bluesman. As a Gibson Custom model, it is premium-priced. And the Epiphone Lucille also offers a more affordable option.

Featuring a laminated maple body with glued-in maple neck, it boasts a bound rosewood fingerboard and multi- bound body and headstock. With stereo and mono outputs plus the 6-way Varitone switch, it’s classic B.B. on a budget. Neither guitar comes with B.B’s left hand – his vibrato technique is legend in the history of electric guitar – but the guitars may help you get that King tone. Soak up that B.B King tone in this tour de force. Related features for B.B. King fans: Learn How to Play like B.B. King here B.B. King | Biography & History | AllMusic google+ Artist Biography by Bill Dahl Universally hailed as the king of the blues, the legendary B.B. King was without a doubt the single most important electric guitarist of the last half of the 20th century. His bent notes and staccato picking style influenced legions of contemporary bluesmen, while his gritty and confident voice -- capable of wringing every nuance from any lyric -- provided a worthy match for his passionate playing.

Between 1951 and 1985, King notched an impressive 74 entries on Billboard's R&B charts, and he was one of the few full-fledged blues artists to score a major pop hit when his 1970 smash "The Thrill Is Gone" crossed over to mainstream success (engendering memorable appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show and American Bandstand). After his hit-making days, he partnered with such musicians as Eric Clapton and U2 and managed his own acclaimed solo career, all the while maintaining his immediately recognizable style on the electric guitar. The seeds of Riley B. King 's enduring talent were sown deep in the blues-rich Mississippi Delta, where he was born in 1925 near the town of Itta Bena. He was shuttled between his mother's home and his grandmother's residence as a child, his father having left the family when King was very young. The youth put in long days working as a sharecropper and devoutly sang the Lord's praises at church before moving to Indianola -- another town located in the heart of the Delta -- in 1943.

Country and gospel music left an indelible impression on King 's musical mindset as he matured, along with the styles of blues greats ( T-Bone Walker and Lonnie Johnson ) and jazz geniuses ( Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt ). In 1946, he set off for Memphis to look up his cousin, a rough-edged country blues guitarist named Bukka White . For ten invaluable months, White taught his eager young relative the finer points of playing blues guitar. After returning briefly to Indianola and the sharecropper's eternal struggle with his wife Martha, King returned to Memphis in late 1948. This time, he stuck around for a while. King was soon broadcasting his music live via Memphis radio station WDIA, a frequency that had only recently switched to a pioneering all-black format. Local club owners preferred that their attractions also held down radio gigs so they could plug their nightly appearances on the air. When WDIA DJ Maurice "Hot Rod" Hulbert exited his air shift, King took over his record-spinning duties.

At first tagged "The Peptikon Boy" (an alcohol-loaded elixir that rivaled Hadacol) when WDIA put him on the air, King 's on-air handle became "The Beale Street Blues Boy," later shortened to Blues Boy and then a far snappier B.B. King had a four-star breakthrough year in 1949. He cut his first four tracks for Jim Bulleit 's Bullet Records (including a number entitled "Miss Martha King" after his wife), then signed a contract with the Bihari Brothers ' Los Angeles-based RPM Records. King cut a plethora of sides in Memphis over the next couple of years for RPM, many of them produced by a relative newcomer named Sam Phillips (whose Sun Records was still a distant dream at that point in time). Phillips was independently producing sides for both the Biharis and Chess; his stable also included Howlin' Wolf , Rosco Gordon , and fellow WDIA personality Rufus Thomas . The Biharis also recorded some of King 's early output themselves, erecting portable recording equipment wherever they could locate a suitable facility.

King 's first national R&B chart-topper in 1951, "Three O'Clock Blues" (previously waxed by Lowell Fulson ), was cut at a Memphis YMCA. King 's Memphis running partners included vocalist Bobby Bland , drummer Earl Forest , and ballad-singing pianist Johnny Ace . When King hit the road to promote "Three O'Clock Blues," he handed the group, known as the Beale Streeters , over to Ace . It was during this era that King first named his beloved guitar "Lucille." Seems that while he was playing a joint in a little Arkansas town called Twist, fisticuffs broke out between two jealous suitors over a lady. The brawlers knocked over a kerosene-filled garbage pail that was heating the place, setting the room ablaze. In the frantic scramble to escape the flames, King left his guitar inside. He foolishly ran back in to retrieve it, dodging the flames and almost losing his life. When the smoke had cleared, King learned that the lady who had inspired such violent passion was named Lucille. Plenty of Lucilles have passed through his hands since; Gibson has even marketed a B.B. -approved guitar model under the name.

The 1950s saw King establish himself as a perennially formidable hitmaking force in the R&B field. Recording mostly in L.A. (the WDIA air shift became impossible to maintain by 1953 due to King 's endless touring) for RPM and its successor Kent, King scored 20 chart items during that musically tumultuous decade, including such memorable efforts as "You Know I Love You" (1952); "Woke Up This Morning" and "Please Love Me" (1953); "When My Heart Beats like a Hammer," "Whole Lotta' Love," and "You Upset Me Baby" (1954); "Every Day I Have the Blues" (another Fulson remake), the dreamy blues ballad "Sneakin' Around," and "Ten Long Years" (1955); "Bad Luck," "Sweet Little Angel," and a Platters -like "On My Word of Honor" (1956); and "Please Accept My Love" (first cut by Jimmy Wilson ) in 1958.

King 's guitar attack grew more aggressive and pointed as the decade progressed, influencing a legion of up-and-coming axemen across the nation. In 1960, King 's impassioned two-sided revival of Joe Turner 's "Sweet Sixteen" became another mammoth seller, and his "Got a Right to Love My Baby" and "Partin' Time" weren't far behind. But Kent couldn't hang onto a star like King forever (and he may have been tired of watching his new LPs consigned directly into the 99-cent bins on the Biharis ' cheapo Crown logo). King moved over to ABC-Paramount Records in 1962, following the lead of Lloyd Price , Ray Charles , and before long, Fats Domino . In November of 1964, the guitarist cut his seminal Live at the Regal album at the fabled Chicago theater and excitement virtually leaped out of the grooves. That same year, he enjoyed a minor hit with "How Blue Can You Get," one of his many signature tunes.

"Don't Answer the Door" in 1966 and "Paying the Cost to Be the Boss" two years later were Top Ten R&B entries, and the socially charged and funk-tinged "Why I Sing the Blues" just missed achieving the same status in 1969. Across-the-board stardom finally arrived in 1969 for the deserving guitarist, when he crashed the mainstream consciousness in a big way with a stately, violin-drenched minor-key treatment of Roy Hawkins ' "The Thrill Is Gone" that was quite a departure from the concise horn-powered backing King had customarily employed. At last, pop audiences were convinced that they should get to know King better: not only was the track a number-three R&B smash, it vaulted to the upper reaches of the pop lists as well. King was one of a precious few bluesmen to score hits consistently during the 1970s, and for good reason: he wasn't afraid to experiment with the idiom.

In 1973, he ventured to Philadelphia to record a pair of huge sellers, "To Know You Is to Love You" and "I Like to Live the Love," with the same silky rhythm section that powered the hits of the Spinners and the O'Jays . In 1976, he teamed up with his old cohort Bland to wax some well-received duets. And in 1978, he joined forces with the jazzy Crusaders to make the gloriously funky "Never Make Your Move Too Soon" and an inspiring "When It All Comes Down." Occasionally, the daring deviations veered off-course; Love Me Tender , an album that attempted to harness the Nashville country sound, was an artistic disaster. Although his concerts were consistently as satisfying as anyone in the field ( King asserted himself as a road warrior of remarkable resiliency who gigged an average of 300 nights a year), King tempered his studio activities somewhat. Nevertheless, his 1993 MCA disc Blues Summit was a return to form, as King duetted with his peers ( John Lee Hooker , Etta James , Fulson , Koko Taylor ) on a program of standards.

Other notable releases from that period include 1999's Let the Good Times Roll: The Music of Louis Jordan and 2000's Riding with the King , a collaboration with Eric Clapton . King celebrated his 80th birthday in 2005 with the star-studded album 80 , which featured guest spots from such varied artists as Gloria Estefan , John Mayer , and Van Morrison . Live was issued in 2008; that same year, King released an engaging return to pure blues, One Kind Favor , which eschewed the slick sounds of his 21st century work for a stripped-back approach. A long overdue career-spanning box set of King 's over 60 years of touring, recording, and performing, Ladies and Gentlemen...Mr. B.B. King , appeared in 2012. Late in 2014, King was forced to cancel several shows due to exhaustion; he was later hospitalized twice and entered hospice care in the spring. He died in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 14, 2015. B.B. King and Lucille: A Love Story B.B.

King and Lucille: A Love Story Ted Drozdowski | 09.16.2010 Perhaps no other musical partnership has a history as long as that of the blues legend B.B. King and his beloved guitar named “Lucille.” Today the Gibson B.B. King Lucille model is a gorgeous ebony queen with gold hardware bearing King’s name on its headstock. But over the years there have been many Lucilles, including an actual woman whose name King took for his guitar. The Lucille saga begins with her in the winter of 1949, when King – who turns 85 on today – was playing a Twist, Arkansas dance. A fight broke out and the burning barrel of kerosene that was used to heat the room spilled, spreading its flaming contents. Panic ensued as the fire began to cover the floor. Everybody, including King, fled. Once outside, he realized he’d left his prized guitar, a $30 Gibson acoustic, and returned to retrieve it. The next day King learned two people had died in the blaze, and that the fight triggering the conflagration was over a woman named Lucille.

He renamed his Gibson after her that day, as a reminder to never do anything as stupid as fight over a woman or enter a burning building again. King switched to electric guitar and began his recording career that same year, cutting his first single “Miss Martha King” for Nashville-based Bullet Records. At that point, he played another solid body electric, but by the early ’50s he was a Gibson man for life. During that era he was photographed with a Les Paul Gold Top and a hollowbody Gibson L-5CES , and when semi-hollowbody Gibson guitars hit the market, he switched to those to achieve greater volume at the fore of his orchestra. He made his way through the Gibson “ES” family, traveling and recording with a series of ES-335s , ES-345s and finally ES-355s until 1980. King began using the ES-355 as soon as it was introduced in 1958. With its bold block neck inlays, gold hardware, split diamond headstock emblem and ample binding, the model remains the Cadillac of the ES series.

In 1980, just before the regular production of ES-355s ceased, the first Gibson Lucille Model was built. The Lucille has evolved over the years, but the first-generation models were drawn right from the ES-355TD template – with the “T” standing for “thinline” and the “D” for dual pickups. The guitar also sported both stereo and mono output jacks – the better for King to achieve his thick, buttery tone. With its six-position Varitone rotary dial prominently displayed on its body, the Lucille, and ES-355s with the Varitone option, for that matter, may resemble the ES-345, but there are important differences. The Lucille has a maple rather than mahogany neck for a brighter tone and there are no f-holes, which makes the guitar better suited for higher volumes. Initially, Gibson also made Lucille in cherry red. The one notable exception from the contemporary model’s ebony finish is Joe Perry’s “Bille” one-off Lucille variant – named after his wife – that was made in white especially for him by the Gibson Custom Shop. Today there are two B.B. King Lucille models in production.

The Gibson Custom Shop makes the flagship version, with a gleaming ebony finish, gold hardware, block inlays, stereo and mono output jacks, sumptuous binding and “B.B. King” set ornately into the headstock over a curlicue inlay and beneath a pearloid crown. There’s also an Epiphone B.B. King Lucille , with a more modest headstock bearing only the names “Lucille” and “Epiphone,” and a fine-tuning tailpiece. Along with King’s birthday and the 30th anniversary of the Lucille model, there’s one more historic event in King’s career to celebrate. The album that many believe to be King’s finest, Live at the Regal, was released 45 years ago, in November 1965. Recorded the year before at Chicago’s Regal Theater, where King was a regular and a local hero, it is one of the greatest live albums ever cut, if only for the way it captures the loud and relentless magnetic connection of the audience and their beloved performer.

At times the screaming threatens to overwhelm the performances of such great entries in the King repertoire as Memphis Slim’s “Everyday I Have the Blues,” Robert Nighthawk’s “Sweet Angel,” Leonard Feather’s “How Blue Can You Get?” the early King hits “Please Love Me” and “You Upset Me Baby” plus the tongue-in-cheek “Help the Poor.” The disc captures King as a vital pup of just 40 years, at the height of his stunning vocal and guitar powers, with a Gibson ES-355 named Lucille tucked under his arm. And the album remains a touchstone for anybody interested in understanding what the magic of live blues is all about. Blues legend B.B. King, inspiration to generations of musicians, dies at 89 - LA Times Blues legend B.B. King, inspiration to generations of musicians, dies at 89 B.B. King in New York | 1969 David Fenton / Getty Images B.B. King, whose performances took him to small and large cities alike, plays the guitar at Central Park in New York in June 1969. B.B.

King, whose performances took him to small and large cities alike, plays the guitar at Central Park in New York in June 1969. (David Fenton / Getty Images) Randy Lewis Contact Reporter B.B. King, the blues legend who inspired generations of musicians, has died. He was 89 B.B. King , the singer and guitarist who put the blues in a three-piece suit and took the musical genre from the barrooms and back porches of the Mississippi Delta to Carnegie Hall and the world's toniest concert stages with a signature style emulated by generations of blues and rock musicians, has died. He was 89. The 15-time Grammy Award winner died Thursday night in his Las Vegas home, said Angela Moore, representative for his youngest daughter, Claudette. He had struggled in recent years with diabetes. King died peacefully in his sleep, Claudette King told The Times. PHOTOS: B.B. King | Life in Pictures Early on, King transcended his musical shortcomings — an inability to play guitar leads while he sang and a failure to master the use of a bottleneck or slide favored by many of his guitar-playing peers — and created a unique style that made him one of the most respected and influential blues musicians ever.

With one of the biggest voices in blues and blues guitar, B.B. King's discography stretches back almost 60 years. And just about any music listener can call to mind his signature track "The Thrill Is Gone" by memory along with "When Love Comes to Town," his '80s pairing with U2. Below, some other... (Chris Barton) "B.B. King taps into something universal," Eric Clapton told The Times in 2005. "He can't be confined to any one genre. That's why I've called him a 'global musician.'" Because King couldn't figure out how to play and sing simultaneously, he separated the two functions, laying the blueprint for the sung verse followed by the extended solo passage that would become a crucial element in blues as well as in rock music rooted in the blues. That template was exploited by subsequent generations of players, from Clapton and Jimi Hendrix on through to John Mayer and the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Finding that he couldn't make his elegantly long but thick fingers work the beer bottlenecks and metal slides used by so many other blues guitarists, he discovered that he could emulate that effect by rocking the fingers of his left hand rapidly on the guitar's frets similar to the way a classical violinist creates vibrato, establishing a ringing tremolo that became his hallmark. That guitar, a black Gibson hollow-body instrument he named Lucille, became one of the most famous in all of popular music, as central to his public persona as his rotund physique, twinkling eyes and wide-eyed grin that served as a counterpoint to the soul-deep ache at the heart of much of his music. King spent decades honing the craft that helped him escape the poverty of the Deep South, where he grew up on a Mississippi plantation as the son of a sharecropper who became a teenage sharecropper himself before singing and playing his way out of the cotton fields. He was an indefatigable performer who seldom left the concert trail for more than a few days at a time. In 1956 he played 342 shows and even in his later years kept a schedule that would test the endurance of musicians half his age.

In part, it was because he said he had an addiction to something called "need more," but it also reflected his lifelong drive to bring respectability to a form of music disparaged in his youth as "the devil's music" and disrespected during his adulthood as "the music of the ghetto." "People thought I was truly a workaholic," King told The Times in 2005. "But I never got the exposure in my kind of music [given to] other types of music that are exposed daily in the media.… I've had one record that was played like other records. It was called 'The Thrill Is Gone,' the only one I ever had that was played on radio stations like other types of music, unless I was playing with somebody else." He tapped his music and oversized personality in transcending the limitations of a genre that rein in most blues musicians, forging an international identity as a beloved cultural ambassador. King collaborated with hundreds of musicians in most fields of pop music, culminating with his 1989 teaming with U2 on the Irish rock quartet's single "When Love Comes to Town," which brought him to the attention of millions of young rock fans when he was in his mid-60s.

Decades earlier, when black audiences largely moved away from listening to the blues in favor of R&B and soul performers such as James Brown and Ray Charles, King's flagging career was resuscitated when the Rolling Stones, the Animals, Clapton, Van Morrison and other white rockers of the British Invasion started singing the praises of King and other American blues musicians to their young fans. That put King in front of an entirely new audience, and after he put out his version of the Lowell Fulson song "The Thrill Is Gone" in 1969, King went to the upper reaches of the national sales charts and in 1971 collected the first of a string of Grammy awards. :: Riley B. King was born Sept. 16, 1925, on a cotton plantation between Itta Bena and Indianola, Miss. As a young teenager he could pick nearly 500 pounds a day, earning 35 cents for every 100 pounds he picked. ----------- FOR THE RECORD 6:56 a.m.: An earlier version of this obituary stated that B.B. King was born on Sept. 25, 1925. He was born on Sept.

16 of that year. ------------ After he learned to drive a tractor, he upped his pay to $22.50 a day. After enlisting and serving briefly in the Army during World War II, he was discharged by the draft board because tractor drivers were more valuable as civilians. King often cited the plantation owner, Johnson Barrett, as one of the key male role models of his youth, and it was Barrett who advanced him $30 so he could buy his first guitar. "My Darling Clementine" was the first song he learned to play, at first replicating and then synthesizing what he liked in recordings by jazz guitarists Charlie Christian and Django Reinhardt with those of blues players such as T-Bone Walker and Lonnie Johnson. Initially, he played and sang in church and with gospel groups including the Famous St. John Gospel Singers. He took his guitar into the big city of Indianola and staked out a corner, where he played for change from passersby. King learned quickly that people threw more money when he changed the word "Lord" in his gospel songs to "baby" and turned them into secular love songs.

He dropped out of high school at 15 because he could make more money playing for a night than he got for a full day's work on the plantation. After a visit to Memphis, Tenn., in 1946, he set his sights on paying off his sharecropping debts and moving north to try his luck, and to escape the racial violence he had witnessed in Mississippi. He started performing in Memphis with musicians including singer Bobby "Blue" Bland and pianist Johnny Ace and soon caught the attention of blues man Sonny Boy Williamson, who had a radio show on WDIA, the first U.S. radio station to adopt an all-black music format. King became known as "the Blues Boy of Beale Street," then the Beale Street Blues Boy, shortened to Bee Bee King for his on-air nickname, and later simply B.B. King. He signed to Memphis-based Bullet Records in 1949 and recorded four songs at the radio station's studio, including "I've Got the Blues" and "Miss Martha King." While he was playing a barn dance that year in Twist, Ark., a fight broke out between two men in which a lantern was knocked over, setting the barn on fire.

King and the others escaped, but he raced back into the blazing structure when he realized he left his guitar behind. When he found out that the men had been fighting over a woman named Lucille, he gave the name to his guitar "to remind myself never to do anything that foolish." That particular guitar was stolen two years later, but he kept the name for every instrument he used onstage after that, and the Gibson company eventually made it official by creating its B.B. King/Lucille model. In 1951, King connected with Sam Phillips, a music fan and engineer who had just built his own recording studio in Memphis that eventually would become Sun Records, where Phillips discovered Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins and other early rock 'n' rollers. But before Sun went rock, Phillips was busy capturing the excitement of the blues musicians including King, Howlin' Wolf, James Cotton and others who had flocked to Memphis. He recorded what would be King's first hit, "3 O'Clock Blues," released on the Modern label. That took King to the top of Billboard's R&B chart for five weeks and opened the door for a full-fledged music career.

From the beginning, he railed against the down-home image many blues players projected, opting instead to model himself on the big-band leaders he so admired, typically appearing onstage in stylish three-piece suits, and requiring his band members to wear the same. "I never did see Duke Ellington with overalls or jeans on," King said. "I never saw Benny Goodman with any on. Nor did I see Count Basie or Lionel Hampton or Glenn Miller with overalls or jeans. I always thought, from the older musicians I talked to, that you should look different [on stage] than you would in the street. And I like that." The urban sophistication he brought to the blues brought some detractors, who criticized him for catering to white audiences, with some blues purists preferring the unadulterated approach of such predecessors as Robert Johnson and Charley Patton or grittier peers such as Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf. But King's expansive vision also helped take the music far beyond its regional and racial origins.

From 1951 to 1961, he scored 19 more Top 10 R&B hits, but his traditional blues couldn't compete for a mass audience against the dynamic R&B of James Brown, the sexually charged rock of Little Richard or the playful teen-centric poetry of Chuck Berry. Even among black audiences, he found there was a stigma against musicians who played the blues. "People are so class conscious," King told Leonard Feather, then The Times' jazz critic, in 1970. "They associate blues with the ghetto. They don't respect it. Certain black audiences, before they're willing to give you credit, they wait until the media have picked up on you." It was a different story across the Atlantic Ocean. There, young white musicians, enamored of the music they heard on records by King, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Lightnin' Hopkins and other blues masters, funneled their influence into new music that soon stormed the charts on both sides of the sea. And when they talked about where that music originated, King found a new level of appreciation for what he was doing.

"When you mention the Rolling Stones, I get on my knees," King said in 2005, "and say, 'Thank you, thank you, thank you.' Because before them, we didn't get the [attention] we do now." The ball kept rolling after "The Thrill Is Gone" gave him an across-the-board hit. He recorded more than 50 albums — King said he lost count long ago — and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987. He collected a lifetime achievement award from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1988, the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1990 and a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1991. King was married twice — to Martha Lee when he was 17 and then Sue Hall when he was 32. Each marriage lasted about eight years. He had 15 children, Moore said. Staff writer Ryan Parker contributed to this report.

Question: What does B.B. King call his favourite guitar
Answer: Lucille